For the upcoming indoor-sketching season, I’m still going to
do more of the same – complete figures in context – but I’m adding two new
challenges: speed and movement. Last week at Whole Foods, I discovered that,
because there’s no wi-fi, people don’t linger over their snacks and lunches as
they do over coffee at most coffee shops. Instead of staring into their laptops
like statues, Whole Foods’ patrons tend to come in small groups and actually
have conversations as they eat – which means they move and turn their heads
more.

9/30/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, 100 lb. paper

The top sketch took me nearly an hour to complete, but
except for the young man in the foreground, all the other patrons changed
several times. I had barely finished the guy on the right when he flipped his hood
up and walked out. I’d just completed the face of the guy next to him when he,
too, finished his lunch, so I had to borrow the details of the body of a
different guy. But that’s the way it is with sketching people – it’s like playing Mr. Potato Head.

At 12 noon nearby Roosevelt High School must have dismissed
for lunch, because suddenly Whole Foods’ café filled with teenagers. I knew
these girls would be quick with their simultaneous eating, talking and
texting. (Not only did the girl on the left have impossibly straight hair – she
was wearing a skirt that was impossibly short.) I checked the time when they
came in and when they left – they were done in 15 minutes flat! But I was up for the challenge –
15 minutes were all I needed.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Pouring rain at the Pike Place Market: What else can you ask
for when you visit Seattle? Vancouver, B.C., urban sketcher and blogger Sigrid Albert is in town this weekend, so Kate organized an ad hoc gathering at
the Market to sketch with her this morning. Only three of us – Kate, Lynneand I – had the hardcore Seattle chutzpah to slog through the rivers and lakes
forming in the streets to meet up with Sigrid at Rachel the Pig, but it
was fun anyway.

A view window at Sound View Café was the ideal
location to sketch the Ferris wheel (barely visible through the weather) on the
waterfront, which I have been wanting to do for a while. Then Kate, Sigrid and
I decided to sketch each other as we chatted about our respective sketching
communities. Sigrid recently organized a growing Urban Sketchers group in the
Vancouver area. Maybe the Seattle sketchers should make a field trip across the
border for a joint sketchout! Thanks for sketching with us, Sigrid!See Sigrid's sketch from today on her blog. And Kate's blog includes sketches and photos of the day.

The skull that caught my eye today belonged to an orangutan,
and the placard said the skull was a gift of the Woodland Park Zoo. As I
sketched, I couldn’t help but think of Towan, the zoo’s very living orangutan, whom I had sketched last year. I tried to place Towan’s gentle,
contemplative features over this nightmarish skull, and it made me happy to
know I can still see Towan at the zoo, swinging in his hammock.

Speaking of nightmarish, a caged Triceratops skull– found 65
million years ago in Montana – was my next sketch. Now there’s a puppy I’m
happy I won’t have to meet live – although he was herbivorous, so I guess I
wouldn’t need to worry.

9/27/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Sailor pen, 140 lb. Canson Montval

As I waited for my bus ride home, I got my last very quick
sketch of the day: a napping dog who was also waiting for the bus.

I started out in the “Desert” room, where the succulents and
other strange plants looked downright other-worldly, including a huge aloe from
South Africa and a Mammillaria Spinossima from Mexico. The latter looked like a
Slinkytrying to walk out of its pot.

Out in the central work area, I sketched a bright yellow
Malvaceae blossom and a Bird of Paradise, both past their prime but still
adding color to an otherwise gray day.

9/27/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen,
140 lb. Canson XL

Greenhouse manager Douglas Ewing was very hospitable to us as
we sketched, answering our questions and looking at our sketchbooks. In fact,
he invited the entire Seattle Urban Sketchers group to sketch there sometime!

As often happens when I learn something like this, I started
seeing Chinese pinwheel palms everywhere I looked. This one is growing a block
east of my house. As exotic and foreign as these trees still seem, I’ve grown fond of their wide,
fan-like fronds optimistically waving in the cold, damp air.(This is my first test of Canson Montval 140-pound paper.)

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Freelancing from home is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a
blessing because of the freedom and flexibility. It’s a curse because of the
freedom and flexibility.

I had hit a mid-afternoon slump and was hoping for a
distraction. Right on cue, movement in my peripheral vision made me look out
the window. My 84-year-old neighbor was standing on his rooftop, peering down
into the chimney! He looks fit and healthy, and I know he does a lot of handiwork,
but it makes me nervous to see anyone walking around on the slanted rooftop of
a two-story home. His awkward stance, one foot on each side of the roofline,
was just asking to be sketched. I tore my eyes away just long enough to go get
my sketchbook. Unfortunately, he was done peering into his chimney, and I got
back just in time to see him walk down and start to slide slowly down the
slope! He managed to stay in control of his footing, and all I could sketch was
him squatting by the gutter.

9/25/13 Chocolate Brown ink, 100 lb. paper

I was both disappointed and relieved when he got off the roof
a moment later – disappointed because I wanted to keep sketching him, and
relieved that I didn’t have to call 911.

But watching him from that angle somehow reminded me of the
black locust tree that my friend Alice, who lives 10 blocks north, had
suggested I sketch several months ago. (Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing? I had
completely forgotten about her suggestion until that moment.) At the time, the
tree was just coming into leaf, and she had said that its intriguing shape,
which she saw regularly from her front porch, would probably interest me.

I had work to do and shouldn’t really go out. But if I don’t
take my car, it doesn’t really count as going out, right? So I grabbed my bag
and decided to take a walk 10 blocks north. The tree was easy to spot: Even
fully leafed, it still had an interesting shape. I made a mental note to come
back this winter to catch the bare branch shape that had originally attracted
Alice’s attention. (Edited 1/4/14: I went back today to sketch it; all the leaves are gone, but now it's full of "winter buds.")

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Three types of 140-pound cold press papers that I'm stitching up into signatures.

On my trip to Yellowstone, I finished up a couple more
signatures of 100-pound and 140-pound papers in “the Stefano” and
started a third, leaving me only one to spare, so it’s time to stitch up a new
supply of signatures.

Now that I’ve been using the 140-pound Strathmore Series 400 paper for about a month, I’m really liking the way it takes washes. I
thought it held up especially well when I painted Old Faithful and other geysers wet-on-wet. The strong wind kept drying my paper before I could apply
the paint, so I had to rewet it several times. I’m still not quite used to the
rough texture that tends to snag my pen nib, but it’s getting better. I started
thinking that if I found a 140-pound watercolor paper that was smooth enough to
use with pen and ink but still had some texture and also performed well with watercolor, I could eliminate
the smoother 100-pound paper that I still prefer when I’m not using watercolor.
(I’m staying away from hot press for now, although I may eventually try it.)

(I have to thank my friend Peggy Haug for convincing
me to explore heavier papers. I got so used to using pen and ink on the
100-pound paper in my beloved Stillman & Birn Alpha and Gamma sketchbooks that
I didn’t realize how poorly it was performing when I added watercolor. I assumed my
mediocre painting skills were at fault, and I didn’t think heavier paper would help. My painting skills haven’t improved dramatically
recently, but some of my painted sketches are definitely better – and I think
the 140-pound paper gets the credit! Thanks, Peggy!)

I found myself wandering around at Artists & Craftsmen yesterday. (Do you ever find yourself inexplicably wandering
through art supply stores with no apparent purpose – and you’re not even sure
how you got there? It’s a very specific type of amnesia suffered only by art
supply hoarders.) Rifling through the stacks of watercolor paper pads, I found
two I had not yet tried: Canson’s Montval Artist Series and Canson XL (I couldn’t find it at A&C online).
They’re both 140-pound cold press, but I’m guessing that the XL is student
grade, since it was less than half the price of the Montval. Both are cheaper
than the Strathmore 400 I’m currently using, but they both also feel less
rough. I’m not necessarily looking for top quality – my only requirement is
that it be acid-free – so I’m giving them both a try. Maybe I’ll carry a
signature of each of the three 140-pound papers I have and compare them side by
side. (Another hoorah for the Stefano that enables me to do this!)

As for the pen. . . A couple weeks ago I was talking about
the Sailor fountain pen with the funky ski-jump nib and how it was
growing on me. Toward the end of the Sketching Forum discussion thread I referred to, right after I wrote that post, Zoe mentioned the Hero 501-1 pen at isellpens.com, which she prefers to the Sailor. What’s hilariously
ironic is that my frustrating, unsuccessful search for that Hero, which I had
heard several other sketchers raving about a while back, is what eventually led
me to buy the Sailor! But since the Hero link had been dropped into my lap, and
the pen was only $15, I couldn’t resist getting one, if only on principle.

I’ve been using the Hero only a short time, but so far, I’m
not impressed. Yesterday I used it on a couple of sketches at Whole Foods
(the man on the left in the middle sketch and the man on the right in the lower
sketch), but I had to give it up and switch to the Sailor after a bit because the
ink kept skipping. The “ski jump” is shorter than on the Sailor, which makes it
harder for me to control. And most annoying of all is that the metal-cased Hero
is significantly heavier than the plastic-cased Sailor, and I do tend to favor
lighter-weight pens.

I’m sticking with my Sailors.

(And this just goes to show that preferences for things like
pens are almost entirely a personal matter. Reading reviews or comments by
users can be interesting and sometimes revealing, but most of the time, the
only good pens are the ones you like and keep on using. Now if I can just
remember that the next time I read a rave review about yet another pen. . .)

Monday, September 23, 2013

After finishing a few errands this morning, it was still
raining hard. I considered stopping by at Zoka Coffee for some
sketching, but it was so sloppy-wet outside that I didn’t feel like getting out
of the car. . . and then I remembered: Whole Foods on Roosevelt has an
underground parking garage as well as a spacious café area. Score!

I can’t really complain about the rain – I had a great
summer with plenty of outdoor sketching – but that means I haven’t spent much concentrated
time sketching people since last spring. Sure, I sketched quite a few vendors and buskers at farmers markets, but it’s at coffee shops that people busy on their laptops might as well be paid models – they hardly move at all. That’s how I work on my people-sketching chops. I had settled in at a well-positioned table with coffee and
sketchbook, and that’s when I noticed that people come and go much more quickly
at Whole Foods. The reason? No wi-fi. My rusty people-sketching chops
definitely got a workout trying to keep up with hungry patrons scarfing down quick
meals.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

In
addition to geysers, a major attraction of Yellowstone is the wildlife. Although
we never saw any bears, we did see plenty of bison and some elk. Sketching them,
however, was another matter. I did attempt to sketch one bison, but it’s not
easy through binoculars. (I’m more impressed than ever by birders and
naturalists like John Muir Laws who do much of their sketching through
scopes.)

9/19/13 Bison sketched through binoculars.

Easier
to sketch were the many dead animals mounted on the walls at Shoshone Lodge and Guest Ranch a few miles outside of Yellowstone. I counted 22 of them in the
lobby – elk, deer, bears, moose, bobcats and even a jackalope.

9/19/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper

One lively animal kept us entertained in the car: Zia, a Chihuahua/Pomeranian
mix.

For
the kind of sketching I do, I usually have better results if I spend less time
rather than more. The few times I have spent more than an hour on a sketch (such
as my first sketch of Germany’s Köln Cathedral, which took two hours), whatever
I gained in detail and accuracy, I lost in freshness and spontaneity.

At
no time is it more important to sketch quickly than it is when traveling with
other people. I don’t count Greg among those “other people,” because if there’s
something worth sketching, there’s certainly something worth photographing, so
he’s always busy with his camera. But we were visiting Yellowstone with three
family members, and I wasn’t sure how patient they would be. As it turned out,
they were all very tolerant of my sketching, for which I was happy and
grateful.

Nonetheless,
not wanting to stretch their limits, I always tried to sketch as quickly as
possible. These four sketches from our second and third days at the park were all
done in 10 to 15 minutes each. It helped that the weather was dreadful – very cold,
rainy, sleety and windy.

Yellowstone National Park is best known for the world’s largest collection of geysers and other
hydrothermal features, and the most famous of all is Old Faithful. We
arrived at Old Faithful’s location shortly after it had just blown, so we had
more than an hour to wait for the next one. While the others in my party took
photos or killed time inside the information center, I went straight to the
bleachers surrounding Old Faithful’s blow hole to stake out a seat, front and
center.

I killed
the hour by sketching the growing crowd and getting my paints ready for Old
Faithful’s eventual eruption. A few times while we waited, a ranger shouted to
the crowd that a huge storm was expected, and we were all at risk of being
struck by lightning. She urged us to seek shelter immediately. Although the sky
was definitely ominous, no one budged. (After waiting an hour, are you kidding?)

When
Old Faithful blew at 4:12 p.m. (only three minutes later than the time
predicted by the information center), my paints and I were ready.

Luckily
for us, the electrical storm didn’t begin until we were back in the car.

In
the summer of 1955, the rest of my family – my parents, my sister and my two
brothers – went on a “big” road trip from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park. To give you an indication of just how big this trip was for them, my
dad bought a brand new Ford station wagon to get there, and – for the first
time ever – they used color film.

I
know all of this because I’ve seen the photos (all 12 of them! Color film and
processing were expensive) many times, and I’ve heard the stories – the many
bears they saw, Old Faithful, the Liberty Cap at Mammoth. Since I was not to be
born for another three years, this big road trip would always be the one that I
missed.

My dad with his new Ford, 1955

This
week, 58 years later, I finally caught up with the rest of my family and took a
trip to Yellowstone. It wasn’t exactly a road trip – we flew to Bozeman and got
into a car from there – but since we met up with three of Greg’s relatives for
the visit, I sat in the back seat for three days while “dad” did the driving
through the park.

These
two sketches were done in Bozeman before and after Yellowstone. The top one is
the view from Brad and Dee’s home surrounded by mountains. The one below was the
view from our room at the Bozeman Holiday Inn Express, also surrounded by
mountains. They don’t call it Montana for nothing.

Two years ago today I started drawing. (My first day of
drawing was actually determined by the second day and the third day and every
day after that that I kept on drawing instead of quitting as I had in previous
years, all the way up to today.) A year ago when I wrote a retrospective post about my first year as a sketcher, I focused on the path that brought
me to that first day. Today I ask: Where have the past two years taken me?

One way to look back is to review my progress, so I did
something that I haven’t done in a long time: I pulled my first couple of
sketchbooks off the shelf and thumbed through them. The sketches in today’s
post are all from my first few months of sketching. (If you ever feel
discouraged, I highly recommend looking through your old sketchbooks!)

12/7/11

It’s gratifying to see that regular practice leads to
progress. But even if I continue practicing at the same rate that I am now, I
know that I can’t expect the same degree of progress going forward as I
experienced during the past two years; I think at some point everyone levels
off, and then the changes are usually more subtle.

But a more important difference isn’t apparent from my
sketchbooks. I think the single-most significant change since September 2011 is
in my confidence in my own ability to learn.
I’m certainly not confident that I can draw anything I want to – I still get
cowed by plenty of subjects (a complex building, vast landscape, trees, cars,
fountains – my list of sketching nemeses continues to grow) – but I’m confident
that I can try. I’m confident that if
I keep trying, I’ll probably get
better. Two years ago, when I saw a challenging subject (in other words,
everything), I probably would have avoided it, or hemmed and hawed for a while
and then given up. But most of the time now, I study any subject for a few seconds
or minutes, and then I just sketch.

11/5/11

After filling more than 20 sketchbooks and posting well over
a thousand sketches on my blog, I guess by now I’ve learned that the worst
thing that can happen after making a sketch is that I turn the page.

The best thing that can happen? I turn the page and make
another sketch.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

I
don’t need much motivation to visit a chocolate factory, and today I had a
second motivation: to sketch! What an amazing location for a Seattle Urban Sketchers sketchout – the scent alone was intoxicating!

Boehm’s Candies & Chocolates has a long, eclectic history centering on the life of its founder,
Julius Boehm. The Olympic athlete, candy maker and art collector built an Alpine
chalet in Issaquah because the foothills reminded him of his Austrian homeland.
The whole property – which includes the chalet, a chapel, the candy
manufacturing plant and what used to be Boehm’s residence – is stuffed to the gills
with art he collected or had commissioned. Many of the pieces are replicas of
well-known art, such as the Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man” and “David.”
(As soon as I saw all the rooms filled – filled!
– with art, I thought of Steve Reddy’s penchant for sketching spaces
filled with many, many objects. Steve, you should have been there!)

With
so many choices, I was a bit dazed, but I finally settled on a sculpture of
Christ bearing his cross, which is just outside the chapel that Boehm built as
a shrine to mountain climbers. There were also at least two weathervanes on the
buildings, so I sketched them both.

As
for the chocolate. . . I was the one still licking my lips as I sketched.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

A
board member and newsletter editor for Lakeside North Condominium in the
Maple Leaf neighborhood contacted me recently, asking permission to use this image
in the condo’s newsletter. He learned I was a Maple Leaf resident when he found
this sketch of the Maple Leaf water tower, which I sketched more than a year ago, on this blog.

Last year at the fair, I did most of my sketching inside the animal barns. Today I still
sketched several chicks, a goat, a couple of alpacas and, oddly enough, a tiny white
pony that had been painted partially pink (the tint I have on my sketch below is
probably the most accurate color I captured today). But on this visit, I also
wanted to spend some time sketching larger views of the fair.

9/13/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor

My first stop was SillyVille, where the kiddie rides hadn’t yet opened – score! Being
able to sketch the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel while they weren’t moving
was an excellent coup on my part! Once the rides opened, I could easily toss a
kid on a horse.

After
lunch with Kate and Peggy (during which we shared the biggest, greasiest
pile of curly fries any of us had ever seen; my arteries clogged just looking at
them), I wandered over to the new Luminasia attraction, a “larger-than-life
lantern festival” produced by a Chinese company. At an additional cost of $12,
it didn’t interest me much, especially since it’s best seen at night. But what
attracted my attention was the fake Space Needle hovering in the background and
the Alice-in-Wonderland-sized daffodils greeting the people lined up to get in.

9/13/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Zig marker, 100 lb. paper

I’ll
tell you what struck me as the most unusual thing about the fair: The number of
people whose attention I attracted! I’m
so used to sketching in the middle of public scenes and getting ignored by
everyone. Today all my sketches took longer because so many people stopped to
look and chat. I guess the fair is where you go to see something new.

I
was half-expecting his repertoire to be classical, but that shows how much I
know. Much to the delight of several young audience
members, his first tune was the “Indiana Jones” theme. While I sketched, he
played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” followed by the theme to “Star Wars.” I
have to say, it was the first time I’d heard Star Wars played as a cello solo.

That’s
one of many reasons I like hanging out at farmers markets.

(The
sketch of the cellist fills the last page in the Stillman & Birn Beta
sketchbook I was working on when I got my “Stefano” sketchbook. I finished off my last Alpha last week. Although I’ve been using the Stefano
sporadically since I returned home from Europe, I wanted to finish off these
last two sketchbooks before using the Stefano full-time. Now the true test
begins: Does the Stefano work long-term as my everyday sketchbook?)

Jazz
saxophone music drifted lazily around the Queen Anne Farmers Market. I
was sitting in the shade at a comfortable communal table, finishing up my butter
toffee crunch ice cream from Parfait and wishing that the table
faced something a bit more sketchworthy than the backs of the vendors’ tents. I
licked up the last of my scoop and went looking for the source of the music.

He
looked familiar, and I realized I had sketched him last year at Phinney Farmers
Market, but he had worn a hat then. I was enjoying the music and still wanted to
add more details to my sketch, but I could see that he was packing up to leave.
I didn’t want him to go before I’d had a chance to drop money into his case, so
I went over to him and learned his story. Boyd Phelps had had a stroke a while
back, and he had to re-learn all of his musical skills. He now plays with the jazz band Sax Attack. According to his website, “Boyd was the first
person to earn a doctorate in music with emphasis in saxophone performance and
literature at the University of Washington.”

Thursday, September 12, 2013

After
sketching the fog over Green Lake, I walked to my favorite stand of
maple trees for another seasonal sketch. (To
see my series of sketches marking the seasonal changes in this stand of maples,
scroll down to the labels at right and choose “seasonal maples.”)

Whenever I intend to paint a sketch, I automatically grab a
Lamy filled with Platinum Carbon ink – my waterproof ink of choice – for the
line work. But since I’ve been using my Sailor filled with Diamine Chocolate
Brown lately, I tried something new this time: I did the line work with that water-soluble
ink instead. It’s a nice warm brown that washes with a reddish hue – just right
for these trees that are definitely showing touches of red and orange. Against
the backdrop of the foggy sky and lake, they seemed to blaze even more
brightly.